Amazon Marketing Bloopers

Mike sent me a priceless e-mail from Amazon.com. Here’s the important content:

“For the next few days, you can pre-order your copy at a savings of 0% by following the link below.”

Webcam view of male working

0% you say?

Then below you see that the price is $6.96, for a savings of $.03.

No doubt, this was generated by some of Amazon’s amazing personalization technology. I’m not being sarcastic – it really is amazing. But sometimes automation isn’t a good thing. If I were Amazon I’d put something in place to filter out 0% savings offers, plus something to avoid sending $.03 discounts to folks…

Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent and the EVP of Marketing Services at Clearlink. He's been a digital marketer since the days of AOL and Compuserve (25 years, if you're counting). He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Smashing Magazine, and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, Seattle Interactive Conference and ad:Tech. He has published several books about business and marketing: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle, The Web Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies, and Conversation Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at portentint, and on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/ianlurie.